UK Job Market Report
31 March 2025
Adzuna has the most complete index of UK job vacancies covering all regions in the UK, based on every job vacancy advertised online in the UK from over 1,000 sources. This data is then normalised, de-duplicated, mix-adjusted and outliers are removed in real time to give an accurate, complete, up to the minute view of the job market. Our UK Job Market Report tracks advertised vacancies, average advertised salaries, competition for jobs, trending roles, time to fill positions, and more.
We also supply real-time data to the Number 10 Dashboard, the Cabinet Office and the Office for National Statistics’ labour market indices. For more granular data breakdowns at a local authority level, job title, or skill level, please contact our labour market intelligence division, Adzuna Intelligence.
Vacancies
UK hiring recorded its biggest monthly increase in three years in February, up +3.73% to 859,329, a positive sign for UK businesses despite a gloomy economic outlook and growth forecasts being slashed by the OBR. Job vacancies are still down annually, albeit the smallest drop since July 2022, -0.8% compared to February 2024.
Salaries
Average salaries have continued to climb, up +1.59% month-on-month and +7.85% annually – the third month in a row that annual increases have been over 7%. This does appear to suggest that UK employers are adapting to the new normal of a tight job market, with companies willing to invest in top talent.
Salary transparency increased slightly in February to 47.69%. Whilst there are still more job adverts without salary information (52.31%), it is the first time in a few months that transparency has gained ground.
Time to fill
The average time it takes to fill job roles is shortened to 34.9 days from 35.2 days in the previous month.
Competition
Despite the rise in total vacancies, the jobseeker per vacancy ratio has increased to 2.08, up from 2.05 in January.
Hottest cities
Cambridge remains the top city for job hunters, with the lowest jobseeker to available roles ratio at 0.4, with 6,831 roles available. Guildford comes second with 0.45 and Oxford third with 0.71.
The hardest city to find a role is Bradford, with 9.59 jobseekers per role, followed by Birmingham (5.28) and Luton (5.1).
UK regions
Advertised vacancies are up month-on-month in all regions, led by Wales (+6.55%), Northern Ireland (+5.83%), and North East England (+5.62%).
Due to the uptick in the national jobseekers per vacancy ratio to 2.08 from 2.05 in January, the majority of regions saw jobseekers also rise. South West England, North West England, and East Midlands experienced a slight rise in figures. Northern Ireland continues to have the highest ratio at 3.66, with just over 40,000 claimants across the region.
Northern Ireland topped the charts for annual wage growth, up +14.16% from last February. There are also several regions where average salaries have reached £40,000 for the first time ever, with West Midlands, North West England and Eastern England joining London. South East England continues to be at the bottom end of the table, with +4.67% growth compared to last year’s figures.
UK sectors
February saw hiring increase across multiple sectors, compared to January, bringing some much-needed growth back to the market. Graduate jobs increased by +16.7% from the month before to nearly 20,000 job roles nationwide. This is still down -12.5% compared to February 2024, however, it will be good news for those continuing to look for roles following graduation. Top employers include: EY, which recently opened its graduate programme for July and September intake, offering 138 positions, Enterprise Mobility, which is hiring 123 graduate management trainees, KPMG which has started recruiting for its graduate audit programme for autumn, and Transport for London is offering 18 apprenticeship opportunities.
Other sectors including Healthcare & Nursing (+10.17%), Social Work (+9.12%) and Maintenance (+9.05%) also experienced a healthy increase in the number of available roles. There were some sharp monthly falls in available roles for sectors including Retail (-10%) and Logistics & Warehouse (-12.03%). The negative picture continued for annual hiring figures, with hiring slumps in Retail (-42.57%), followed by PR, Advertising & Marketing (-36.71%), Energy, Oil & Gas (-35.15%), Travel (-33.03%) and IT (-25.28%). Increases in sectors including Teaching (+36.36%), Legal (+16.6%), and Sales (+10.63%) helped to offset this decline compared to the year before.
Sustained average salary increases meant only a few sectors saw average advertised salaries fall month-on-month in February: Scientific & QA (-0.6%), Charity (-0.41%) and Admin (-0.3%). The largest monthly salary increases went to Sales (+3.68%), Retail (+3.58%) despite a large fall in available roles, and Travel (+3.44%). Year on year, many sectors had over 10% increases in advertised salaries, including Logistics & Warehouse (+19.38%), Maintenance (+18.97%), Retail (+15.53%) and Domestic Help & Cleaning (+13.58%), Customer Service (+12.81%), IT (+11.05%), and Manufacturing (+10.67%). The only decline was recorded in Legal which posted a decrease in annual salary for the second month in a row, down -2.41% compared to the same time last year. In general, annual private sector wage growth continues to outstrip the public sector, up +6.1% compared to +5.3%, respectively.
The sectors with the shortest time to fill jobs were Admin (31.2 days) and Legal (31.5), whilst the sectors which took the longest to fill roles include Domestic Help & Cleaning (43.0), IT (38.4) and Creative & Design (38.1).
Trending jobs
Healthcare Support Worker remained top followed by Social Care Worker for the second month in a row. Three new roles entered Adzuna’s Trending Role list in February: Internship (third), Project Manager (sixth) and Software Developer (seventh). This metric ranks occupations based on their Interest Quotient, which measures how often job postings are viewed relative to other roles. A higher quotient indicates greater demand among jobseekers, with the increase in searches for Internship roles suggesting that increasingly young people are prepared to take a non-permanent role to get their foot in the door.
Methodology
About Adzuna
Adzuna is a smarter, more transparent job search engine used by tens of millions of visitors per month. We love using the awesome power of technology to bring together every job in one place, help match people to better, more fulfilling jobs and keep Britain working.
Adzuna supplies real-time data to the Number 10 Dashboard, the Cabinet Office and Office for National Statistics labour market indices. In 2018, Adzuna won the contract to run Find a job, one of the British government’s most used online services.
Adzuna.co.uk was founded in 2011 by Andrew Hunter and Doug Monro, formerly of eBay, Gumtree, Qype and Zoopla and is backed by leading Venture Capital firms LocalGlobe, Index Ventures and Smedvig Capital.
We’ve spent a decade developing smarter, more transparent job search so jobseekers worldwide (we’re in 19 countries) can zero in on the right role faster.
About the Job Market Report
Adzuna has the most complete index of UK job vacancies covering all regions in the UK. The technology collects every job vacancy advertised online in the UK from over 1,000 sources. This data is then normalised, de-duplicated, mix-adjusted and outliers are removed in real time to give users an accurate, complete, up to the minute view of the job market.
Claimant count data is based on the latest Labour Market Statistics released by the ONS. The city areas referred to in this study are the top 50 cities in the UK, ranked by comparing the job vacancies in Adzuna’s comprehensive search index of over 1,000,000 live jobs to the number of claimants in each city from the latest ONS data. The full Jobseeker’s Allowance claimant count statistics are available for download here: www.nomisweb.co.uk.
The interest quotient for key roles is calculated by comparing how many views job postings for different occupations on Adzuna receive over a given month and comparing this to the overall job posting views over the same period. It provides a proxy for talent supply in the jobs market.
For more granular data breakdowns at a local authority level, job title, or skill level, please contact our labour market intelligence division, Adzuna Intelligence.